When Herod realized that he had been outwitted by the Magi, he was furious, and he gave orders to kill all the boys in Bethlehem and its vicinity who were two years old and under, in accordance with the time he had learned from the Magi.

(Matthew 2: 16)

The words translated outwitted or sometimes deceived has an air of mockery about it. He was angry because they didn’t just deceive him, they left him feeling tricked and mocked. He told the wise men to come back and they didn’t do it.  Herod was a diabolical despot, a very cruel and emotionally twisted man. When he knew he was dying, five days before he died, he had another one of his sons killed. He also had some of the most elite of Jerusalem rounded up, incarcerated and then he commanded that when he died, they should all be killed. His reason was because when he died, he wanted the whole city to cry. He said, when I die, nobody is going to cry, as a matter of fact, they’ll probably have a party. I want all these other people killed so there’ll be some tears shed when I die. 

That’s the kind of guy he was and now he is exceedingly angry because the wise men were supposed to come back and tell him where this baby was, so he could “worship him”, yeah, right. He wanted to kill him. He issues a proclamation that all the male children under two years old are to be put to death. All the male children who were Bethlehem and the surrounding districts under two years old,  according to the time which he determined from the wise men.  He thought he’d get it covered by having all the babies under 2 years old killed. 

What does that say to us? Very simple, the world has always wanted to kill Jesus Christ, it wants to destroy him. And if you are one of his children, they might have the same attitude toward you. Let me quote something Jesus said in John chapter 15. 

“If the world hates you, keep in mind that it hated me first. If you belonged to the world, it would love you as its own. As it is, you do not belong to the world, but I have chosen you out of the world. That is why the world hates you. 20 Remember what I told you: ‘A servant is not greater than his master.’ If they persecuted me, they will persecute you also. If they obeyed my teaching, they will obey yours also.

(John 15: 18-20)

Here’s the spiritual reality, on the one hand God loves you so revel and rejoice in it, but then step out into the world and then you will discover if you’re a follower of Jesus Christ, even if you just want to be a good person the world wants to destroy you. Some people are motivated by the God of this world, Satan himself to destroy weverything that God would want to build up. The world has always hated God’s, son, and who are followers of him will mean that the world hates us. Where seeing it more and more in these days, particularly in the workplace, but that’s just the tip of the iceberg. I could go on and on and you could probably tell your own stories.

Have you ever experienced the hostility of the world simply because you said you were a believer in Jesus Christ? This has never been truer in the UK than it is right now. Then even in the midst of the hostility, you need to remember that God loves you . He does not stop all the bad stuff, but he always loves you. He doesn’t prevent all of the pain, but he loves you. He does not step in and miraculously remove all the hurt, but he loves you. We need to learn this because if we follow the Lord, this is going to be our experience. When we are hit by opposition, hostility, and hatred. Even just the natural events of live like the death of a loved one can hit us hard and it’s imperative that you remember this current situation is just the name of the station, but it’s not the final destination.

In the midst of the pain and the sorrow, God loves you and this is proof in this passage from John Ch 15 which record the words of Jesus himself on this matter.

Then what was said through the prophet Jeremiah was fulfilled. 

 “A voice is heard in Ramah, weeping and great mourning,
 Rachel weeping for her children and refusing to be comforted,because they are no more.” 

(Matthew 2: 17-18)

This is a quotation from Jeremiah, Chapter 31. Again, this is a type, in this case Rachel, who died in childbirth, is described in Jeremiah as weeping for all of those descendants of hers going into captivity. Matthew was saying this is a type, and can be used as an illustration if you or I were to feel hated. 

This passage starts with and God taking his son out of danger into Egypt.

19 After Herod died, an angel of the Lord appeared in a dream to Joseph in Egypt 20 and said, “Get up, take the child and his mother and go to the land of Israel, for those who were trying to take the child’s life are dead.”21 So he got up, took the child and his mother and went to the land of Israel. 22 But when he heard that Archelaus [Son of Herod – like father like son, when the Jewish people gathered in the temple to have a remembrance service for some people his father had killed, he killed them, massacred 3000 faithful Jewish believers So can’t stay in Judah, can’t go anywhere.] 22 was reigning in Judea in place of his father Herod, he was afraid to go there. Having been warned in a dream, he withdrew to the district of Galilee, 23 and he went and lived in a town called Nazareth. So was fulfilled what was said through the prophets, that he would be called a Nazarene.

(Matthew 2: 19-23)

Here’s a problem, the word Nazarene or Nazareth does not appear in the Old Testament. What prophet is he quoting? There’s no prophet that we know says anything like this. What’s he talking about? Well, look at the passage carefully. He didn’t say he was quoting a prophet, he said. They went to Nazareth that it might be fulfilled, which was spoken by the “prophets”, plural, and this is a little different. So, what is Matthew’s point? The point is that many of the prophets spoke about the fact that the Messiah would be despised, and that’s the key here. Prophets, plural, a number of them talk, predicted that the Messiah would be despised. During the lifetime of Christ, the City of Nazareth was looked down upon. In John chapter one when they said to Nathaniel, we have found the Messiah and he says, in verse 46, and I quote, “can anything good come out of Nazareth? 

The big point here is that the Old Testament predicted the Messiah would be despised, and so they end up in Nazareth which was despised city and region.  “How can any good thing come out of Nazareth? Well, the Messiah came out of Nazareth. He was despised, and he was from Nazareth. He wasn’t from Jerusalem, He wasn’t from Rome, He was from Nazareth. It seems to me that one of the spiritual truths in this passage is that if you’re following Christ, you just might experience what he did, and you might just be despised.

Have you ever had anybody look down their nose at you because you were a Christian. Some of the feeling I’ve get from people on occasion is, call yourself educated, call yourself intelligent, then why are you a Christian. Or Christianity is for weak people who need a crutch in life. Lots of people experience that kind of way of being despised. These are the kinds of things that are hurled at people who call themselves Christian. So don’t think it’s strange that if you follow Jesus Christ that what are you going to experience is being despised.

Let me begin to wrap all this up and I’ve said three things. 

Number one, this first spiritual truth in this passage is that, God loves you. Thank you. 

The second is the world hates and despises Jesus then and Christians today. One of Matthews great purposes is to demonstrate that Jesus Christ is the Messiah of the Old Testament, and the way he does that is he constantly says this part of Jesus’ life fulfilled this Old Testament prophecy, and he does it three times in this one passage, and he does it again and again and again throughout his book. 

The other thing you need to know, and this a little subtle is that is by the nature of the selection of the material that he puts in his book he is also trying to encourage people. That is because those who originally received this had been experiencing hostility. They too were hated and despised. It was written to a Jewish audience a little after Christ had been crucified, arose and ascended. It’s just very possible that the original recipients of this we’re experiencing some of this opposition even persecution. So, Matthew deliberately selects stories to encourage them, and this is one of them. Jesus was hated, so don’t be surprised that you’re going to be hated. Because Jesus himself was despised, he is saying. But that is only the beginning. Mary in the very first story of Matthews account could have been left the disgraced by Joseph. There were probably people then who could identify with that, and there are probably plenty of people today who can still identify with the prospect of being disowned by their families. 

Then there is the persecution when all the male infants in the Bethlehem region are slaughtered, Jesus himself is only saved by the escape to Egypt. But the great spiritual lesson of all of the followers of Christ is that in spite of all this we must remember that God loves you. Let me pursue this a little further because I want to try and equip you for handling any challenging events in the future. Let me say two things, .If you take a hardnosed realistic look at life one of the things, you’re going to discover is at times you will face hostility and rejection. Opposition, and those things often come through other people spiritually opposed to you, because they are opposed to any idea of a God having a moral agenda for their lives. The on top of that you will definitely experience pain, sorrow, and tears, well only if you ever choose to love anybody else. 

This is a wicked, wicked word. It is important for you to see from this passage that God doesn’t necessary stop all the suffering, but he loves and wants to bring you through. We live in a wicked world, folks. I could never have imagined when I was a young even growing up in a place where terrorism was commonplace, that I would live to see the day when people would blow themselves up to deliberately kill innocent women and children, not in the name of a political ideology, but in the name of God. People’s lives are full of trouble, and it doesn’t always get easier. I’ve got some good news in the midst of all of that, the anchor that keeps you steady, safe and secure. When bad things seem to be happening to you, don’t think of it as if he’s doing something to you. He loves you and he is doing something for you. He’s protecting you in ways you don’t even appreciate. He’s fulfilling scripture in ways you might not even be aware of, and he loves you, and by accepting that you are in fact, responding in the way God planned for you to respond, and thereby growing spiritually.

So, what does that mean? It means this, it means you can look to the future and look reality square in the face, eyeball to eyeball with all of its ugliness and can still rejoice in the fact that God loves you, and God’s going to take care of you. If nothing else, God is going to teach you through this and that is going to be good for you in the long run. It may not feel it at the times, but God is working it to create good for you in the longer term.

Many years a Lady called Gladys Aylward who worked for the same missionary society as my father did many years ago told how she visited a small village in China that had been attacked by bandits. The had missionary in that village, and the house where he lived was raided and set it on fire. Shortly afterward, when she was being shown the devastation, the missionary said, they even burned my Bible and my hymn book. As they looked at the rubble, their eyes landed on one page that had left scattered and salvaged from the missing hymn book. One page had survived and on that that one page she saw the words. “Joy to the world the Lord has come”. Gladys Aylward said that this was an image she carried around in her head for the rest of her life. That is the picture I want you to see, next time you struggling. Imagine in your mind’s eye a house that is burned to the ground, and nothing is left and right in the middle of the ashes is a page with the words, “Joy to the world the Lord has come”.

No matter how bad it gets, no matter how much it hurts, no matter how painful it is, you can rejoice in the fact that God loves you and he’s not doing something to you, he was doing something for you because he loves you very much. Sometimes we look at the world and see all of the hate that’s going on and we wonder where God is.  We look at things that happen even in our own lives, and we wonder what are you doing, Lord. Then if we look at the cross then we are reminded that God loves and He gave us His son to die for us. And, that he has given us His Holy Spirit, and he has given us His word, and you have given us the reassurance that nothing can separate us from your love. For that we can be thankful, and always remember this in the days to come, especially in difficult days, that God loves us. He is always  doing what’s best for us, and all things can work together for good, for those of us who love God and are called according to his purpose.